


Models and Glue

by BlueRaith



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Family Fluff, almost too cute, father-daughter bonding, sister bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6263404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRaith/pseuds/BlueRaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Rae D. Magdon, a fic taking place in her "The Best Entertainment" Series. The blueberries break a couple of Shepard's models. Prompt taken from Rae's tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Models and Glue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RaeDMagdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeDMagdon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Moments In Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729955) by [RaeDMagdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeDMagdon/pseuds/RaeDMagdon). 



> Couldn't resist this, I come from a family of all girls, similar age differences and everything. As the oldest sister, let me just say that fighting with the youngest sister is totally realistic. Me and my youngest sister drove each other up the wall. Our poor middle sister was constantly caught between us, picking sides as appropriate, or not as the case could be.

Shepard supposed it was too good to last. She really should have known better. The girls had been quiet. Too quiet. In her defense, this kind of day was one of her favorites. Calm, no outstanding errands or extracurricular activities she had to rush all three of her kids to in some seemingly impossible twist of time and physics to get them were they should be on time. Well, actually most of the time she got everyone to their destinations fashionably late. Liara was the one who excelled at doing the impossible as far as scheduling was concerned….

Regardless, she and Liara were enjoying a relatively peaceful day for once. Liara doing some 'light' reading. Shepard had once taken a look at the sort of leisure reading her bondmate was fond of on her omni-tool. They were textbooks in her humble opinion. She was browsing the news before finding something else to do. Procrastinating, in effect. But that was when they heard it. The seemingly echoing sound of something the kids weren't supposed to touch breaking into pieces. Shepard had learned that sound relatively early in Athena's life. Kids seemed to love touching stuff they were told to stay away from and her kids were no different.

“Nezzie, look what you did!” Athena's voice rang out as if summoned, angry and chasing away the relaxing day Shepard had been enjoying in an instant.

“What?! You were the one who bumped into it,” Benezia shot back defensively.

Liara sighed heavily as she stood up. “Well, there goes that.” Whether she was talking about the reading or their day off, Shepard didn't know but she agreed with her all the same. Time to survey the damage before things got too bad.

“After you pushed me too hard. I told you to be careful.”

“No you didn't! You were playing too, stop trying to act like you didn't go along with this.”

Diana's voice cut in at that moment, trying to whisper in the way kids do when they're trying to hide something. Overly loud and carrying through the apartment as if there weren't any walls to block it in any way. “Guys, shut up! Mom and Dad will hear you fighting. If we fix it, maybe they won't notice.”

Shepard and Liara made it to the main room at that point to see the girls facing each other, arguing furiously and surrounding whatever it was they had broken.

“Oh, yeah Diana. Let's fix the shattered glass. I'll get the glue and we can find each and every piece on the ground, put them _all_ back together, and stuff Dad's model in the case before they come out to make dinner,” Athena snapped out and her words made a shiver run down Shepard's spine. Model? She really, _really_ hoped she had heard wrong.

“Yeah, Di, that's dumb,” Nezzie agreed, the speed in which she and Athena went from fighting to agreeing with each other and back again was sometimes a wonder.

“Well, it's better than standing here and shouting about it. Mom and Dad will notice for sure this way.”

“And what are we going to notice?” Liara asked mildly, causing the girls to jump almost in unison and spin to face them. Immediately, they all started to give their own versions of events in a near dizzying cacophony of voices.

“It was Diana's idea to play commando and pirate—“

“You were the one who said we should use our biotics or it wouldn't be any fun!”

“Yeah, but _Nezzie_ said we should play in here because this room had the most space—“

“Did not!”

“Yes you did! You pushed me into the case too.”

“No, you tripped over your own feet!”

“What? I told you not to push too hard.”

Shepard tuned the fight out as Nezzie went to prove just how hard she could push Athena without her biotics once she saw the innocent casualty shattered on the ground. Maybe if it had been the Destiny Ascension, or her mass relay model, or even Harbinger, it wouldn't have hit her so hard. But it just had to be the one model that hit her like a singularity to the stomach. The Normandy SR1 was in several pieces on the floor, glass from her display case glittered around it like the stars the real ship used to fly through. Maybe it was poetic this way. Destroyed suddenly, without a chance to defend itself from cruel fate.

Of course, it was too good to hope that this would be the end of it. Athena and Nezzie had been pushing and shoving each other in the beginnings of a true fight as Liara went to separate the two before they could step on any of the glass around them or actually hurt each other. Benezia gave one final, _hard_ push to her older sister, sending Athena stumbling into the display case again, bringing Shepard's attention to her Sovereign model precariously teetering on the edge of the shelf it was placed on.

_Don't you do it, you bastard. It took me_ months _to find you in the first place, not to mention all the shit the real you gave me…._

But Sovereign seemed determined to laugh at her from beyond the grave as it seemingly gave one last dramatic bob and plunged to its death. Shepard went to arrest its fall with a pull, but fate turned against her again when Diana stepped in her way, forcing Shepard to watch helplessly as it smacked to the floor with gusto and flew into pieces.

It was that sound that finally got Athena and Benezia to stop fighting and the room grew uncomfortably quiet as Liara and the girls waited for her reaction. It occurred to Shepard that it probably also concerned all four of them that she had yet to say a word at this point to begin with and now… this.

Shepard took a deep breath. On the one hand, yeah, she was pretty damn upset that the girls were using biotics in the house and broke _Normandy_ out of all the ships they could have possibly broken. On the other, it wasn't as if this was the very first time she and Liara had caught them playing with their biotics in the house after they had broken something. Shepard may or may not have been a conspirator the last time, when they had torn a painting, costing who the hell knows how many credits, that Liara's mother had commissioned centuries ago. Liara had been livid at that one. Perhaps this was karma coming to bite her in the ass.

“It's fine,” she finally said tightly, though she was trying to sound as collected as she could. “Girls, what have we told you about using biotics in the apartment?”

Her kids looked at each other nervously, probably not quite believing that she wasn't yelling at them, never mind the fact that Shepard tried not to just _yell_ at her kids when she could discipline them in far more productive ways. It was something she and Liara agreed on.

“Not to?…,” Athena ventured hesitantly.

“Precisely because something like this could happen or you could hurt yourselves without someone supervising,” Liara admonished sternly. “These models mean a lot to your father. We don't fill the house with things that mean nothing to us. I don't think any of you would like it if your father or I broke one of your toys because we didn't respect how much you could care for it. She collected all of these throughout the war as a way to relax during one of the darkest periods of our lives, many of the manufacturers for these models no longer exist because they were destroyed with the Citadel. So—“

Shepard felt sick at the thought of even trying to track down surviving replacements for these figures. She didn't really want to even consider the sheer effort it would take.

“Liara, it's fine. They're just models,” she lied, hoping that no one could see through her, but she knew that was futile. Liara was already looking at her in concern so that was one person she wasn't fooling.

“Dad, we're really sorry,” Diana told her, unable to meet her eyes as Athena bit her lip uncomfortably and Nezzie rubbed her arm. Great. Seemed they all knew she was lying through her teeth.

“Girls, go to your rooms. Your father and I will determine how long you'll be grounded later,” Liara finally said after an uncomfortably long silence. The kids shuffled their way out of the room miserably, and Shepard wished she could have said something actually reassuring beyond _it's fine_ to them. They were just models, after all. Kids broke stuff all the time across the galaxy, she didn't really know why this was such a big deal to her. They were almost glorified toys, right?

Liara broke her chain of thought as she put her hand on her shoulder. “Shepard, I can clean this up.”

Now Shepard felt like a jerk. There was no way she was going to act like such a baby that she was going to force her wife to clean up her decades old… toy… models.

“No, I got it, Li. I said it was fine. They're just models.”

She got a raised brow in response. “Shepard, I know they were important to you. The Normandy alone was something that was going to remind you of the SR1 long after every… thing else is gone.”

She rolled her shoulders uncomfortably, aware that Liara had just zeroed in on the heart of what was bothering her in one try. It had become clear over the years that she was going to live far longer than the average human. Longer than most of her friends. Shepard sometimes wondered if having a bondmate who regularly saw her very thoughts had a drawback.

“What? That's silly, Li. I've got you to remind me, that's better than some plastic toy,” she insisted stubbornly. “I've got this.”

She went to gather what she'd need to clean the mess, hoping that this would be the end of it and they could forget about her dumb models.

* * *

Athena pressed her ear to her mother's office. Hoping that she was going to be occupied for the rest of the night and wouldn't notice that she wasn't in her room. It had been several hours after she and her sisters had broken their father's stuff and she still felt terrible about it. She felt guilty that her mother had been right, that she didn't really think about the fact that her parents cared about their stuff the same way she did for her own things and the way her father had looked as they went to their rooms. So, the only choice she had was to fix her mistake. And that meant sneaking out of her room and risk making her parents even angrier with her than they already were.

“One and a half _million_ credits?!” Her mother's voice rang out, tinged with irritation. “The appraiser we _both_ agreed on said it was worth half that. ...Yes, I do realize just how rare this particular model is, that was the reason we got the appraiser.”

Athena leaned back, feeling worse than she already did and not wanting to hear any more. The most credits she'd ever had at once was just over one hundred from her last birthday. She'd have to turn… like a thousand years old to even make a dent in that kind of price.

She sighed, realizing that at the very least it sounded like her mother was going to be busy for a while. Her father was already in bed, she could hear her snoring. It made passing that one creaky part of the floor _just_ outside of her mother's office easy. Now it was just a matter of finding out what her parents did with the broken models, finding some glue, and—

Athena swallowed the yelp she wanted to make as she rammed into somebody in the dark kitchen.

“Ow!” Diana hissed out. “The, what are you doing out here?”

That was when the kitchen light flicked on, making Athena's heart race at the thought of her mother's seemingly new ability to teleport from her office.

But it was only Benezia.

“Nezzie, turn the light off!” She whispered urgently.

That only earned her an eye roll. Athena tried not to grit her teeth. “You guys are dumb. How are we supposed to fix Dad's stuff if we can't even see what we're doing?”

Oh. Well, there was no reason to scare her and Diana like that.

Diana must have spotted her frustration. “Okay,” she said quickly, pulling them further in the room. “Then that means we're all here for the same thing and we're going to work _together._ And not fight. Or yell at each other. Or get Mom and Dad's attention any other way, _right?”_

“Ow!” Athena gritted out as Diana's grip tightened on her and Nezzie's arms—if her own pinched face was any sign— almost mercilessly. “Fine, yes, we're working together.”

She hadn't realized just how big Diana had been getting.

“Yeah, Di, let go, we'll be good.”

“Great,” Di said as her grip immediately lessened. “I've already found the pieces. This is going to go even faster now that we're all here.”

Athena rubbed her arm grumpily, thinking that they wouldn't even have to be here if Benezia hadn't— but she couldn't get through the thought. It had gotten her through the first hour or so of what was basically time out for all of them. Thinking that they wouldn't have hurt their dad's feelings if _only_ Benezia or Diana hadn't done what they did. After that, the fact that she _had_ been the one who thought of using their biotics first couldn't be ignored any more. Maybe it was all of their faults in the end, that would probably be a good reason why all three of them had the exact same idea at the same time.

“Nezzie, I'm sorry for trying to blame everything on you,” Athena finally said. It wasn't exactly fun to admit she was wrong. Especially to Benezia who was just as likely to gloat about it as she was to actually accept the apology, but Athena was tired of feeling guilty too.

At first, it seemed like Nezzie really was going to gloat as her eyes widened in near disbelief. Goddess, Athena was allowed to be wrong sometimes, wasn't she? It couldn't be that surprising…. Nezzie opened her mouth, no doubt to make some dumb remark, when she hesitated and frowned instead.

“I'm… sorry too. I got mad that you and Di teamed up on me and tried to get back at you.”

Diana was looking back and forth between them, fidgeting with the trash container that no doubt held the remains of their father's models. “Great, I'm sorry too. Now, let's focus before Mom hears us talking.”

With that, they got to work. And realized quickly that this was going to be harder than they thought it would be. Athena wondered how in the galaxy this was supposed to be relaxing. The models were pretty realistic, apparently proportionally scaled to their real life counterparts, or as close as the makers could guess. She figured the pieces were already small to begin with, broken as well? She didn't get it. Their father wasn't exactly known for her patience. She wasn't irritable or anything, but Athena had heard all kinds of stories about how the great Commander Shepard had cut through red tape and bureaucracy to get what needed to be done, done to save the whole galaxy. Not to mention, there was the time the sink leaked and her father had spent half an hour grumbling at it in kid friendly insults before she called someone in to fix it. The plumber had tried not to laugh as he told them that the whole problem was a loose valve and promptly twisted it tightly in moments. Athena swore she heard him chuckle under his breath about how Commander Shepard was defeated by a sink as he left.

Maybe it was a sure fire way to keep her mind occupied from the war. Athena figured that could be the only way someone would be willing to put themselves through this.

Hours passed as they painstakingly gathered and salvaged as many pieces they could and glued as precisely possible. Which wasn't all that great, Athena could admit. Still, it was the best they could get, even if the Normandy was lopsided on its left wing and Sovereign was missing one of his tentacle arm… things.

“Well, I think that's as good as it's going to get,” Diana said what Athena was thinking. They hadn't noticed just how much time had passed. Nezzie was beginning to nod off as she rested her head on the table. Well, at least all that was left was to clean up and take the models with them so they could—

Dad's snoring was abruptly cut off as her alarm rang throughout the apartment. Diana and Athena traded identical panicked looks.

“Quick, wipe the table off!”

“Put the trash can back!”

“Nezzie, wake up, go to your room. Faster!”

Athena thrust the Normandy and Sovereign into Diana's arms as she gave the kitchen one more look over. Her stomach lurched as she noticed a glob of glue and plastic stuck on the counter next to the sink. Probably what was left of Sovereign's missing arm, but before she could even think of cleaning it up, Athena heard her father's snoring start up again as her mother's muffled voice grouchily said her dad's name.

No time. Her mother was going to shut her father's alarm off, take all her dad's pillows, and come out to make coffee in moments. Athena scrambled out of the kitchen, halfway to the hallway before remembering they had left the light on, dove back and violently threw the switch before running as quietly as possible to her room.

* * *

 

Shepard looked at each of her children in turn. Immediately knowing that they had done something. She wasn't sure what, but it was obvious. Diana was blinking blearily at her burnt toast, Athena's shirt was inside-out, and Nezzie kept startling herself as she nodded off and her hand dipped into her cereal. One look at Liara confirmed that she wasn't seeing things. She steeled herself, hoping that it wouldn't be anything worse than yesterday.

“So,” she finally ventured. “Who wants to go first?”

_That_ got the girls' attention. All three of them snapped awake and looked from her and Liara to each other.

“I'd like to be dropped off first, Dad. I want to go the library for some—“ Athena started to deflect.

“Nice try,” Liara interrupted, hiding her amused smirk well. “How about who wants to go first to explain why all three of you apparently stayed up all night?”

“See, they probably heard us arguing,” Diana grumbled at her sisters.

“If they did, then they would have come out then,” Athena retorted easily. “No, they probably heard us cleaning up.”

Hmm, so that was the source of the mysterious plastic blob Shepard had found this morning. Still, she was going to let them believe whatever they needed to. No reason to give away all of her 'dad secrets' or admit that she hadn't heard a thing last night. If she did, then the girls would realize that she and their mother didn't actually have super-sensitive hearing and they'd probably try to sneak out of the house entirely when they got older. And Shepard _did not_ want to think about why her kids would ever want to sneak out. Why on earth did she go down this line of thought? That problem was literally decades away, no need to give herself a heart attack yet….

She and Liara waited them out, knowing that one of them was bound to crack eventually. And an exhausted Benezia finally proved them right.

“Just give them to her now, guys. Why are we waiting anyway?”

“To make sure the glue dried,” Athena answered, but sighed. “Fine, they found us out anyway.”

Glue dried? What were they planning?

“I'll be back,” Diana said as she scrambled from the table, leaving Shepard and Liara completely bemused at the situation. This was the most secretive the girls had ever been. Sure, Athena liked to find herself some mild trouble every once in a while. Alright, maybe more than that, especially if Lycoris was with her, but this was the first time all three of them were working together to pull the wool over her eyes. And Shepard wasn't exactly a fan. It meant that that could actually work _together._ Which, admittedly was a good thing in the long run, but now? When her kids were at the age of being devious, little monsters? God, that meant that Shepard and Liara wouldn't be able to get Benezia or Athena to tell on each other like they used to if they were on the same side. Diana was already practically a titanium wall if she didn't want to get either of her sisters in trouble. There went their only exploitable weakness in their ongoing efforts to break up their kids' occasional sneaky plans. She and Liara were going to have to rethink their entire strategy. If divide and conquer was finally obsolete, then maybe—

Diana's return interrupted her racing thoughts, holding something behind her back.

“Dad, we're really sorry about yesterday,” Athena started. “We weren't thinking and we were being stupid. We didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Yeah, we stayed up all night because we all had the same idea,” Diana continued.

Benezia tipped her cereal bowl over as her hands moved animatedly. “We didn't even fight! We just wanted to fix it and help you feel better. It's not the same as them not being broken to begin with, but we hoped this would be the next best thing.”

Diana placed two models on the breakfast table. They were instantly recognizable to Shepard, if more than a little battered than they used to be. Sovereign and the Normandy, put back together with a little too much glue here, incorrectly assembled there, and missing a few bits and bobs scattered across them in a few places.

This… this was…. God, and Shepard had been fearing the worst. Maybe that was a concern later, but now? Her girls were looking at her, nervousness and hope written all over their faces and Shepard realized how this must look to them. How did they put it? Hurting her feelings? Yeah, maybe that was more than a little accurate and they probably realized for the first time that was actually possible. Shepard knew that kids thought their folks could be invincible.

And then there was how they just, well, _looked_. Benezia had milk running down the table, probably trailing down her pants without her even noticing. Shepard wondered just how Athena's shirt tag wasn't bothering her as it dug into her neck. And she couldn't believe that Diana had actually taken a bite out of the charred remains of what was barely recognizable as bread. They'd spent _hours_ digging through the trash, finding as many tiny, little pieces they could to slowly and painstakingly glue together her glorified toys.

She started to laugh.

Then she laughed harder as the girls and Liara looked at her like she was crazy. The kids looked like they weren't at all sure what this meant as they looked at each other in complete confusion. Maybe it was about time to let them know she wasn't mad at them.

“Come… come here, girls,” she finally got out and hugged them all tight when they got close enough. “ _Thank_ you. This… it means a lot to me. They're better than before,” Shepard told them, completely genuine.

Sure, it was nice to always have a reminder of the original Normandy crew and mission, but she had made a point yesterday. Liara was in and of herself a reminder already and always would be among other, far more important things in her life. She didn't actually need a model to remember her friends, it was silly of her to attach that meaning to it, she'd _always_ remember them.

'The thought that counts,' Shepard didn't really consider that more than a trite saying. But here her kids were, exhausted after fixing something important to her. That made these glue covered, lopsided models mean more to her than they ever did to begin with.

“Really?” Athena asked, surprised and apparently aware that they weren't exactly the prettiest things in the world now.

“Yep,” Shepard said beaming. “Now go back to bed. You're still grounded for a little while for using your biotics in the house, but I figure you guys deserve to go back to sleep at least. Your mother and I can call your grandpa to come over later.”

The girls gave her one last hug each as they went to their rooms. Shepard grinned at Liara, already feeling so much better than she had yesterday.

“Those kids drive me crazy,” she said fondly.

Liara could only grin back.


End file.
